Billy Babbitt and Joshua McIntyre were frustrated men in their forties. Both were lifelong residents of Putnamville, a small Indiana farm town. Joshua, once a high school English teacher, had been fired from his job after a CNN video showed him peeing on the floor of the Rotunda during the January 6 insurrection. Joshua was also the self-appointed general of the seditious Brawny Lads, but he had lost his appetite for a civil war after being sentenced to federal probation.
Billy Babbitt, once an aspiring writer, had abandoned all thoughts of success after a corporate-controlled publishing house rejected his first and only book. Dubbing himself a Renaissance man who had been born too late for his time, Billy was now a reporter for the Putnamville Gazette. Had Billy lived in Paris in the 1930s, his book would have commanded respect; he would surely have dined with Gertrude Stein and gotten drunk with Hemingway.
The two men were on opposite sides of the country’s political divide, but they had been friends since they were college roommates, studying world literature together. They disagreed on just about everything, but their spats kept their spirits alive, so it would not have profited either of them to change the other’s mind. And so, they met most evenings in Flakey Jake’s, a dive bar on the edge of town, and there they engaged in heated discussions that kept their spirits alive.
On a day as stale as any other, Joshua McIntyre died. Flakey Jake gave Billy the news when he dropped by the bar that evening. Jake, a huge sentimental man, spoke with a frog in his throat. “Billy,” he croaked, “The Lord has delivered Joshua to his reward.” Billy did not believe him. “That’s not funny,” he replied. Since Joshua was a drunk, as well as a convicted insurrectionist, he did not seem a viable candidate for any sort of celestial bounty. But when Jake handed Billy the obituary page of the Putnamville Gazette, Billy spotted Joshua’s eulogy among those of the recently deceased.
Joshua “Bubba” McIntyre passed at the age of 46. He is survived by Irma, his wife, and two daughters, Clara and Belle. Joshua was a beloved English teacher at Putnamville High School where for twenty years he imparted his love of the classics to young, inquiring minds. Joshua was also fond of target shooting and outdoor social clubs, and there was nothing he liked better than bouncing his grandchildren on his knees. Joshua will be missed but heaven will rejoice at his arrival. Funeral services will be held Monday at the Putnamville Catholic Church.
Annoyed by the flowery phrasing, Billy rolled his eyes. “Did he drink himself to death?” he asked Jake.
“Naw,” said Jake. “When his wife dropped by to pay his bar tab off, she said what Joshua died of was cirrhosis of the liver.”
“Bummer,” said Billy. He re-read the obituary and then handed the page back to Jake. “Heavenly reward be damned!” Billy snapped. “For all the good he was, the Lord coulda just as well left him with us.”
Jake, a consummate philosopher, patted Billy on the arm. “His absence will leave a big hole,” Jake said, “but his presence left one too. Billy, you been drinkin’ with Joshua mos’ nights for the past fifteen years. Think of all the brain cells you wasted swappin’ lies with him.”
Billy felt his temper rising, and he glared at Flakey Jake. In the sudden absence of his best friend, he needed a pal not a sage.
“Well, it’s not like I have something better to do in this lousy town.”
“How do ya know that?” said Jake. “God mighta had some plans for you and Joshua mighta been in your way.”
“I’m a newspaper reporter,” said Billy. “That’s enough adventure for me.”
“Naw,” said Jake, “you’re more like a ship that’s been hiding out in a bay. And it ain’t a bay worth hidin’ in if ya wanna know the truth.”
“Spare me the lecture,” Billy said.
Jake sighed like a dog in a pound. “I’m a barkeeper,” he said. “Hell, lecturin’ is what a barkeeper is supposed to do. For a skinny egghead with bad haircut, you’re talkin’ mighty big.”
“So, what are you saying?” said Billy. “That God works in mysterious ways?”
“Why don’tcha get in touch with him?” Jake said. “You can start by goin’ to church. It might have been for your sake that God called Joshua home.”
***
Billy hated to admit it but Jake was right. With Joshua gone to the Great Beyond, Billy needed something else to fill his life. He was not enough of a boozer to handle drinking alone and the will to keep on writing had deserted him long ago. As things stood, he envisioned his future as a series of endless tomorrows, creeping along at their petty pace until the end of his recorded time. But since he had always been bound for oblivion on a series of endless tomorrows, Billy knew it was high time he did something to put meaning into his life.
After attending Joshua’s funeral service at the Putnamville Catholic Church, Billy wondered whether he ought to take Jake’s advice and give religion a try. The funeral was unimpressive, a wholly rote affair attended by a small gathering that included a handful of Brawny Lads. But the drone of the organ inspired him, and Billy began to hope that something strange and haunting was hiding behind the church’s platitudes.
Billy began attending services every Sunday but soon grew dissatisfied. The Old Testament seemed little more than a hymn to slaughter and theft, a land grab that was continuing even to this day. And the Gospels, though profound in their way, seemed too weighty for the parishioners, many of whom attended Brawny Lad rallies when they were not in church. He suspected that if Jesus returned today in his original form, these church folk would not have hesitated to run him out of town. All in all, the Catholic Church, with its village view of God, seemed a mighty empty substitute for a pitcher of Michelob Light.
Returning to Jake’s bar after a month, Billy expressed his discontent. “Religion’s a farce,” he muttered. “What made you think I should go to church?”
“Ain’t choo never been saved?” Jake said. “It’s as powerful as gettin’ drunk.”
“I was hoping for something more profound,” Billy said.
“If religion ain’t profound enough for ya,” said Jake, “go listen to a Moody Blues album.”
“Neither explains the big picture,” said Billy.
“That’s kind of the point,” said Jake. “The big picture is billions of galaxies each filled with trillions of stars. Hell, without a dose of religion and maybe a song or two, there ain’t no way a civilization can hide from stuff like that.”
“Is this what you think about every day when you're washing glasses and pouring beer?”
“It’s my job to figger things out,” said Jake, “But you don’t gotta aim that high. Leave the deep thinkin’ to mystics and barkeeps and go find yourself somethin’ to do.”
***
Another month passed and Billy concluded that God had no plan for him, so he gave up attending the Catholic Church and looked for another retreat. Was it possible that academia might offer him something truly profound? Yes, fate had decreed that Billy would never write a masterpiece, but at least he could weave a tapestry out of all the great books he had read. He decided to write a treatise highlighting some of the giants of literature and discussing the collective impact they had made on the consciousness of the world.
The task, however, proved daunting. Once this project was underway, Billy realized that the world’s great authors did not complement each other much. Hemingway wrote with a fatalism that seemed all but preordained while Upton Sinclair prescribed socialism as Man’s utopian end. Steinbeck and Dickens championed the victims of exploitive societies, but Chekov and Austin were utterly lacking in social consciousness. And while Sinclair Lewis granted epiphanies to the most mediocre of men, Melville and Beckett saw man’s condition as one of sightless descent.
Nonetheless, Billy completed his treatise and complimented himself on its length. Fifty pages was quite an achievement for a reporter for a local rag. But the publishing world again proved too callow for Billy’s towering thoughts, and Billy once more conceded that he had been born too late for his time.
One editor wrote, Mr. Babbitt, we are unconvinced by your omniscient point of view. Your book does show some ability, but we suggest that you limit your scope.
After receiving his twentieth rejection slip, Billy dropped by Jake’s and lamented the slings and arrows of an unsympathetic fate. But when Billy mentioned the writers he had woven into his book, Jake only shook his head and said, “Billy, ya started in the wrong place.”
“What are ya trying to say?” Billy snapped.
“I ain’t trying to say anything,” said Jake. “I’m telling you like it is. Ya shoulda used the great books on religion if ya wanted to discuss world consciousness. The Bible, the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita—that’s what ya shoulda used. I read every one of them fuckers when I wasn’t servin’ drinks.”
“I told ya I don’t like religion,” said Billy.
“Maybe ya don’t,” said Jake, “but ya still shoulda used them books. Hell, them books expanded my mind and made me the guru I am today. And they’ve had a whole lot more influence on the consciousness of the world than a bunch of over-hyped writers contemplatin’ their dicks.”
***
Unwilling to weave the world’s greatest myths into a compatible whole, Billy asked Jake to prescribe a less strenuous path to enlightenment. Jake said Billy need look no further than the groundbreaking series on television if he wished to come up with a comprehensive treatise on the consciousness of the world. Jake said, “Most stuff on television is bubble gum for the mind, but Kung Fu, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone are as deep as any religion. ’Sides that, ya don’t have to strain yer brain to understand what they’re tellin’ ya.”
“Isn’t Kung Fu a Western?” said Billy.
“It’s more than that,” said Jake. “It’s about this monk who beats the shit out of folks while spoutin’ all kinds of wisdom, and it’s got its roots in Genesis and Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Ya know, most of the knowledge I impart to my customers I got from watchin’ Kung Fu.”
“All right, but how about Star Trek? Isn’t that just a fantasy about traveling in space?”
“It’s a fantasy about Man’s final frontier, and it was inspired by Gulliver’s Travels. Each episode is a morality tale as well as a high adventure. Maybe it gets bizarre now and then with its crazy situations, but to go boldly where Man’s never gone before is a mantra we all oughta have.”
Still unconvinced, Billy scratched his head. “Can you say as much about The Twilight Zone?” he said.
“I can say a lot more,” Jake replied. “Racism, war, and religion are woven into its stories, and although the plots are preposterous, every one of ‘em smells of truth. Hell, I’ve never watched a Twilight Zone episode yet without remembering that phrase from Hamlet that there are more things in heaven and earth than a fella can bite off and chew.”
Impressed by Jake’s soliloquy, Billy subscribed to Netflix, and he watched practically every episode of Kung Fu, Star Trek, and The Twilight Zone. At first, the mystical depths of these shows blew his mind away, but when he researched them on the internet, he found stark inconsistencies.
Rod Serling, the producer of The Twilight Zone, was only five foot, four inches tall, but whenever he pitched a prologue, which he did for each episode, he was filmed in a manner that made him look like a man of normal height. This created in Billy a sense of betrayal that he could not get out of his mind. How could he take this show seriously enough to plumb the mysteries of life when each-and-every episode was preceded by a lie?
Kung Fu seemed even less authentic when Billy learned more about David Carradine, the actor who had portrayed the ass-kicking monk, Kuai Chang Caine. David Carradine died in a hotel room in Thailand of autoerotic asphyxiation, and his body had a curtain cord wrapped around his neck and testicles. How could a man who epitomized the wisdom of the East be so immersed in bondage that it spurred him to take his own life?
But the starkest revelation came from William Shatner, Star Trek’s daring skipper, who took an actual space flight when he was ninety years old. Looking into real space, all he saw was a terrible void, a fathomless darkness that promised him only isolation and death. Returning to Earth, William spoke of his venture in a voice so laden with grief that he no longer resembled someone ready to travel where no man had gone before.
Plagued by these contradictions, Billy hung his project up and decided that his best option was to become a more amiable drunk.
***
A week after Billy gave up on the TV shows, he heard rumors about Joshua. Several Putnamville residents reported that, in the early morning hours, they had spotted Joshua’s ghost in the Putnamville town park. Billy remembered how Joshua had drilled his Brawny Lads in the park, so the thought that his specter was hanging around there did not seem too farfetched. Since conspiracy theories had dominated the horizons of Joshua’s mind, it was logical that he would also be corralled in the Great Beyond.
Buoyed by the hope that he might find some closure with his old friend, Billy rose early one morning and strolled toward the park. No heavenly bonus for Joshua, he thought, not if the rumors were true. It disturbed him to think that Joshua’s soul had not yet found its wings. This was not because heaven was likely to welcome a renegade and a drunk, but because Joshua might belong in Valhalla, a realm where fallen warriors go. The notion of Joshua sitting with Norsemen and raising a cup of mead eased the sadness in Billy’s heart as he approached the park.
The park was totally empty except for some Canada geese that were using it as a rest stop from their annual migration south. Yes, winter was fast approaching, and the thought quickened Billy’s pulse. If there was a divinity somewhere, perhaps it lay in the geese. How could such mindless creatures, if not prompted by something sublime, find the awareness to launch themselves on their epic journey south?
Billy paused for a moment, recovering his breath. There was no sign of Joshua and it was too cold to stand around, so Billy decided to warm himself up by jogging ten laps around the park. A stitch struck his side like a bullet as he started to circle the park, and he heard the geese honking among themselves as though they were sharing a jest.
Billy completed several laps around the park, scattering geese as he jogged, and then he spotted a motionless figure under one of the trees. The figure did not look like an emissary from the world to come, but as Billy got closer to it, it proved to be Joshua. Billy felt only annoyance at the presence of his old friend, and he knew at that moment that he had not fully accepted that Joshua had passed. His denial, although stubbornly irrational, was supported by the fact that the ghost was not transparent and had a boozer’s flush on its cheeks.
Joshua squinted at Billy and then he rubbed his eyes. “Don’t forget the coleslaw,” he said in a gravelly voice.
Stunned by such a pedestrian request, Billy did not respond. The ghost, if it could be called that, did not appear to have an agenda—instead, it seemed like a badger that was startled by the light. Billy would have far preferred the glare of a Banquo or the pomp of a Jacob Marley, dispositions consistent with the lives these souls had once led. As it was, he had glimpsed only the trance of a drunkard—a daze that implied nothing more than the ultimate sterility of the void that awaited all.
“Is that all you have to tell me?” Billy said.
Joshua lowered his gaze. “Don’t forget the coleslaw,” he woodenly replied.
Does he even know he’s dead? Billy wondered, a thought that he quickly dismissed since Joshua’s life seemed no more than a joke whatever his physical state.
Probing the firmament was useless. The ghost offered him no clues, and Billy felt himself longing for a change of solitude. And since he had challenged himself to complete ten laps around the park, he left his old friend standing there and went on with his run. The exercise invigorated him and softened his despair, but never in his life had he felt so utterly alone.
-- James Hanna is a retired probation officer and a former fiction editor. His work has appeared in over thirty journals, including Sixfold, Crack the Spine, and The Literary Review. He is also a past contributor to APOCALYPSE CONFIDENTIAL. James is the author of seven books all of which have won awards. Global Book Awards recently gave him a gold medal for contemporary fiction.